TV Shows

The TV sitcom How I Met Your Mother ended last week, and I’ll admit that I was in that majority which hated, hated, HATED the season finale. Is this what I spent close to 6 years of my life waiting for?

I started watching HIMYM right after I finished watching reruns of all 10 seasons of Friends from start to end which was sometime around 2007. Looking back, I ought have just watched all ten seasons of Friends again. Let me put down what I hated about the finale. It’s full of spoilers, but in my opinion, the entire finale episode was a spoiler.

1.WTF BARNEY AND ROBIN:
Two people, both wary of commitment, but completely in love with each other, getting married and living happily ever after. After watching season after season of Barney and Robin pining for each other, being perfect together and screwing it up and then getting back together again and screwing it up and getting back together in the most perfect way, after watching AN ENTIRE FREAKIN’ SEASON dedicated exclusively to their wedding and how their love is true and forever, they’re made to divorce in an exceptionally lame way.

2. WTF MOTHERKILLERS
Let’s write a show on based around a character. Let’s never show that character for 8 years. Let’s make the audience crazy by driving the show into becoming a steaming pile of garbage, knowing that they will stick on *just* for that character. Let’s introduce her, let’s make the viewers fall completely in love with her, while making them think about how perfect she is for the guy who’s been narrating the story of how he met her for 8 years, and then, LET’S KILL HER.

Replace Chucky with Carter Bays.

3. WTF TED’S KIDS
You guys are like the worst kids ever, and should be grounded, and made to listen to the story of how your dad met your mother all over again.

4. WTF MARSHALL AND LILY
Kidding. Those two managed to stay adorable.

Anyway, that ends this rant. There are a lot of other fans who thought that the ending “made sense” and was “realistic” and that irrespective of how the show ended, there would always be criticism. Uh, no. If it had ended the manner it had been building itself up to, there was only one way it could’ve finished. No twists, no gimmicks, and no blue fucking french horns.

UPDATE:
Apparently the video has been taken off due to copyright violations. The alternate ending goes like this – There’s the wedding scene where Ted talks about how much he loves Tracy and how he’ll love her forever, and it cuts to the Farhampton station where they have their first conversation, cuts back to Ted saying “And that kids, is how I met your mother” and the credits roll. No plot twists, just a mushy, grin inducing happy ending. Call it cliched, but why is it so wrong to go the predictable route? Not everything has to have a twist, or an explosion or death or divorce.I mean, this was a show some of us took life lessons from! I can’t believe the writers thought it would be okay for Ted to be in love/obsessed with Robin THE WHOLE FREAKIN’ TIME he was with Tracy and that Tracy herself was just some consolation prize. It’s not okay for someone to be romantically obsessed with an another person for years together. If this is how the writers wanted the show to end, I hope it was because they had written a sequel series titled “How I Met My Psychiatrist”.

Now that Rahul Mahajan has finally been married (and made it as a trending topic on twitter – knocking off Justin Bieber no less), it looks like reality TV will take a break for sometime. But why wait for another cuckoo? Here are my proposals for the next big reality show –

1. TR-in Thangachi Thaedal [TR’s Search for a Sister]: It’s a fact that Vijaya T Rajendhar (M.A), apart from being a one man film unit, mouth-percussionist and the inspiration behind that hairy alien-thing from Star Wars is also Tamil Cinema’s greatest big brother. His moving analogy where he points out how a woman’s virginity is like a torn cloth that cannot be mended (as opposed to a man’s, which is like a wet cloth that can be dried) to his sister and looks like a constipated gorilla AT THE SAME TIME is stuff of legend. There’s very little that can actually be written about how he goes around protecting his sisters on screen too. You don’t mess with girls whose big brother looks like something that just escaped from the Vandalur Zoo man, you don’t. But the truth is, there is very little that is known about TR’s real sister. Does he even have one? I don’t think he does (even if he does, let’s just assume that he doesn’t), and that is where this show comes in.

TR-in THANGACHI THAEDAL – where TR scours all of Tamil Nadu to find the one girl who is worthy of his big-brotherness. Parameters include age (The Man doesn’t drink from the fountain of youth, he IS the fountain of youth. He’s a hero in Tamil Cinema! You don’t expect old ladies to be his sister now, do you? Girls no older than 25 can apply), moral competence, rhyme skyllz and knowledge of tamil culture. TR shall evaluate the contestants himself and pick one very lucky girl who gets to be his real life sister and can be the blessed recipient of his endless paasam.

Probable Sequel : Thangachi Tharkolai – Nadandhadhu Enna?

[Sister Suicide – What really happened?]

-> What A Man.

2. Dr.Joseph Vijay-in Director Deal: As Dr.Joseph Vijay inches closer to the world record for longest string of flop movies, it is up to his fans to dig deep among themselves and find someone competent enough to direct him and make full use of his versatility. The winner, who will be selected through a rigorous process that involves finding not one but TWO differences between the roles that he’s played in the past ten movies will get the opportunity of a lifetime to direct Dr.Joseph Vijay in a role most suitable for his polished and elegant demeanor namely mechanic, courier boy, bike mechanic or vegetable vendor, thus enabling him to finally achieve the world record for longest string of worsttu movies. Since it’s for such a noble cause I’m sure we can expect plenty of participants. A fake press conference YouTube video is also part of the deal.

The Indian Army couldn’t handle a man of his calibre, which is why he’s a full time politician now. While we understand that he’s a one man army, somehow the whole idea of local MLAs tagging behind an enigma is just not fair. Which is why Gaptun himself needs to get out there and recruit men who will be able to complement his stature. Contestants who want to be part of the man’s entourage will have to pass through rigorous training and exercises in bullet dodging, mustache flexing, shock absorption, pigeon language learning, a complete study of Bakistan’s topography, Media Player skills, and most importantly, English lessons. His criticism in the show will be brutal ofcourse – if the participants don’t eieieidowhathesays, rest assured that he will send them out with a flick of his collar (when you’re Gaptun, there really is no other way).

-> The Gaptun shows us how it’s done.

4. Namitha’s Size Zero Mission: I don’t know about entertainment value but I’m sure as hell that this show will give megaserials a run for their money by becoming the longest running show on television. [Note: Clicking on the link will give you google’s image search results for said actress. If you know who she is, you wouldn’t click on that. If you don’t know who she is, go ahead, click, but don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.]

5. The Amit-zing Race: I love the Amazing Race series. For the uninitiated, the show involves 12 pairs of people from different backgrounds who are made to travel around the world with a camera behind them to perform unconventional tasks. The pair that completes all of them first, wins the grand prize of $1 million. I say, put 12 pairs of Amits (Surely you know who an Amit is by now. They’re the guys who are convinced that Chennai SUXX YAAR!) in our beloved city and put them through a set of unique tasks like catching an auto from T.Nagar to go to Besant Nagar with a budget of 50 Rs, buying SeppanKazhangu from Koyambedu Market, get away from a Chennai Traffic Cop WITHOUT paying anything, watch a TR movie without running away from the theatre and so on. The Pair that finally completes all these tasks will win….something. Ha. Let them complete first. Then we’ll think about the prize.

When I come back home from work, I usually head straight to my bedroom and sleep (my sleep cycle has gone off the charts recently, I’ve been clocking 15 hours a day of late). Or bug my mom for coffee. Or sit in front of the computer to check my inbox (for imaginary new email). But today, instead of doing all those proper, normal things,I decided that I would read today’s ET and ‘improve my financial knowledge’. I plopped in the living room sofa next to Paati (Grandma – who was watching some mega-serial on Sun tv) and picked up the pink newspaper. It was blaring about the great crash in the SENSEX the previous day. That was when Paati just HAD to turn up the volume. I put the paper down and was about to tell her to lower the volume when I actually started watching that stuff. Honestly, it was way more interesting than the FM’s comments on the robustness of the Indian Economy.

Scene 1:Two school girls are coming back from school. Both of them have unnatural smiles plastered on their faces. They are received by a middle aged man, who is waving in such an enthusiastic way that his arm might fall off anytime.

Girl 1 (with creepy smile) : Haaai daddee!

Daddee: Ennada chellam, school mudinjirtha?[Oh darling, is school over?]

(And to think his eight year old daughter could have dug her way out of the school toilet using the spoon packed with her lunch. Einstein ka baap, this one.)

Everyone goes Ha.Ha.Ha in an acutely constipated manner to celebrate the happy father daughter moment. The Ungil Daddee pays the ice-cream kaaran. Suddenly the atrociously happy pingpong music which was playing in the background changes into a bad BSB(!) style bass guitar rip.

Like the few other million people in this world, I too, watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. And continue to watch reruns whenever I can. The time I used to see the show, Amma would brush it off as ‘just another TV show’ and never really bothered.

Couple of days back, when I was watching a re-run, I didn’t really expect a change.Big Mistake.

And it didn’t stop. She just went on. And on. And on. I do believe that it was the longest half hour of my life. And I ran out of saliva to swallow as well.When the credits came on (finally), she left the living room saying something about how “Pasanga indha maari programme paathu kettu kuttichavura pora”.

I made a mental note that day to watch the show on the computer from now.

Greatest Hits

1. The Chetan Bhagat Plot Generator - Why buy another CB novel when you can make your own? Give the Chetan Bhagat Plot Generator a whirl, today!
2. Angst - If you want to write means, write Sriramajayam 108 times. At least some punyam will come for you.
3. Deviance - The Seshadhris are overjoyed that their son wants to get married, at least until they find out that he wants to get married to another man {Short Story}
4. The Boredom of Ravana - Ravana decides that he must do something about all the free time he has, and pays a visit to Kishkinta {Short Story}
5. Leadership, and Such - A (mostly) honest account of my nemesis from school, Powder Subramani.